SIR systems used in automotive vehicles commonly have a plurality of airbags to provide frontal protection and side protection for both passenger and driver positions, and in some cases, seat belt pretensioners. In at least some jurisdictions it is considered to be desirable to offer an option to suppress or disable one or more of the airbags by authorized service personnel. It is desirable to have an indicator viewed by the operator which shows the state of each airbag as well as to have a permanent record of an airbag disabled state in the event of a crash. In order to prevent inadvertent deployment, it is also desirable to disable the airbags during servicing or vehicle assembly.
Although it is known to provide airbag control systems with switches operable by the vehicle operator or by authorized service technicians for disabling one or more airbags, this additional hardware and associated changes in existing systems would be unnecessary if software changes could readily be made in the airbag controller.